One reason that I can see as a possibility is that the owner of Mybitcoin tried to sell short other peoples bitcoins on the market, so he could later on buy them back cheaper, and making a profit. Because they knew that short selling is pretty much impossible, but they had the opportunity for doing this (a market advantage).

Maybe it all went wrong (the short trade), maybe they felt that why not take all the money and got greedy.

The guy appears to be a crook... don't even bother trying to analyze what ran though the guys head. What he did was make life harder for all of us as it's my guesstimate that he caused the crash by dumping a large number of coins on the open market. Though I cannot prove that, all signs point to yes.

Nah he straight out dumped a big chunk of them on the market which lowered prices... This also led to some panic sells as people saw them dropping. This all coincided with people losing confidence from the Polish exchange losing 17.5k bitcoins, MTGox issues and of course the MyBitCoin case...He probably hasn't dumped them all, so expect a climb, then another drop!I'm ready to buy if they drop low enough

Nah he straight out dumped a big chunk of them on the market which lowered prices... This also led to some panic sells as people saw them dropping. This all coincided with people losing confidence from the Polish exchange losing 17.5k bitcoins, MTGox issues and of course the MyBitCoin case...He probably hasn't dumped them all, so expect a climb, then another drop!I'm ready to buy if they drop low enough

If I'm not mistaken the volume hasn't indicated that this is the case... the drop is (in my very uneducated opinion) simply a reaction to a one-two punch of bad news (bitomat + mybitcoin), not any indication anyone is unloading huge quantities of stolen coins.

this speculation is BS...Why go through the complications of short selling when you can just steal them and sell them on the open market?

Because on a downward trend you can make a good amount of profit short-selling and everyone will still use your services so you're not just cashing in the reputation you've built up? It's still a pretty bullshit theory though.

The guy appears to be a crook... don't even bother trying to analyze what ran though the guys head. What he did was make life harder for all of us as it's my guesstimate that he caused the crash by dumping a large number of coins on the open market. Though I cannot prove that, all signs point to yes.

I happen to disagree on principle.

I believe that the best way to understand a complex system is to come up with as many hypothesis as possible be they outlandish or not.

Then, as observations come in, start kicking out the hypotheses which are failing.

This is a lot more work and requires a lot more neural activity, so it is not for everyone. But it's pretty much standard fair in the scientific world. It's more tedious than rocket science, but the method has a proven track record.

The guy appears to be a crook... don't even bother trying to analyze what ran though the guys head. What he did was make life harder for all of us as it's my guesstimate that he caused the crash by dumping a large number of coins on the open market. Though I cannot prove that, all signs point to yes.

The market didnt crash because he dumped coins. The market crashed because the huge theft erodes peoples confidence in bitcoin, and day traders will sell and buy back at any opportunity for a scare.